


This Is What Happened

by CobaltStargazer



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Nightmares, PTSD, Personal Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-25
Updated: 2015-04-25
Packaged: 2018-03-25 16:11:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3816709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CobaltStargazer/pseuds/CobaltStargazer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes bad things happen to good people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is What Happened

**Author's Note:**

> Do not read this one unless you've seen the latest episode. Watch that first, then check this out. You've been warned.

"Aaron...Aaron Hotchner...."

She's sitting next to the bed. If he opens his eyes, he'll be able to see her, but he doesn't really need to do that. For some reason he can see her outline through his eyelids, and he can smell her perfume and hear her sing-song voice, and that's enough. More than enough.

They only come to him at night, when its very dark and quiet, and its almost like they're taking turns, going in shifts. In the daylight, they leave him in peace, and he works cases and does his job. He's started seeing a counselor because David advised him to. He talks about Peter Lewis and the smell of burning sage, of lost childhood and revenge. And at night, old ghosts come to visit, revenants that had been asleep before this happened. Its torture, but at the same time...at the same time there's a part of him that doesn't mind so much.

"Hello, Megan."

The blonde smiles, uncrossing her legs and re-crossing them the other way. She's the calmest of them, and he can't let himself examine if that's because she chose her path at the end. He's afraid to touch her, that he might find her solid if he does. He knows she's dead, and if she's both dead and real (whatever real is when he's asleep) then this goes beyond night terrors and into something he doesn't even want to put a name to. A personal nightmare that he can't wake up from even in the middle of the day.

"I thought you were _never_ going to answer," she says, and he feels himself smile in return even though his insides are one hard knot of fear. Its like the laughing after Lewis drugged him, something he can't control. He hasn't told the therapist about these little 'visits' yet. A confession like that could get him removed from the field permanently if the wrong people hear about it, and the job has been his throughline since Haley --

"Aaron."

The knot tightens, a sinking sensation that's so powerful its like an intensifying of gravity, and whatever playful thing Megan might have said no longer matters. Haley's mouth is turned down at the corners, sadness and disapproval mingling so that she looks the way she looked just before she served him with divorce papers right in the office. Even now, he doesn't blame her for that. She changed, yes, but he could have done things differently, been easier to live with, been home more often, done a hundred things differently so that she hadn't decided to leave him.

"Is the job still who you are?" she asks, and she doesn't even sound accusing. She sounds sad, sad and mournful. Whether that's for him or for the life she no longer possesses - because he's aware that she isn't really here, not the way he's here - he can't discern. Not here in the dark. If he turns on the light, he'll be able to see her. But she's so vivid in his mind that he doesn't need that. Even though things were terrible between them at the end, and even though its too late to ever rectify the situation, there's a tiny corner of his heart where she's still alive. Where he still loves her.

"No clever answers this time, Agent Hotchner?"

That's Erin, and in his sleep he puts his head under the pillow to block out the sound of her voice, but it doesn't work. Because she's not really here at all, she's inside his skull with the rest of the ghosts. The chair makes a phantom noise as she shifts her position, sitting forward, and she is in death as she was in life, autocratic and annoyed . He crams his head deeper beneath the pillow, but she's inexorable. Nightmares always are.

"This little parade of yours doesn't have anything to do with me," she says curtly. "It doesn't have anything to do with them, either. Not really. You have control issues, Agent Hotchner, That's why you saw what you saw, and your guilt, your _ego_ , is what's hauled us out of cold storage."

His dream-self says nothing, and there's a level where he says nothing because he's worried that she's right. He either saw them die or he was there to see them freshly dead, and that has become irrevocably tied to the events Peter Lewis set in motion. Up to and including seeing his co-workers, his friends, gunned down. Even though it only happened in his mind's eye and David and Derek and Spencer are alive and whole, the ones who come to him at night aren't. At least...

"Stop it. Can't you see you're hurting him?"

Kate's British accent is cool and soothing, like balm on a sunburn, and he risks taking a look. She's standing, her fair hair pulled back from her face. He saw her in the morgue, and before that he saw her with her back blown open, bleeding to death on a public street. But she's smiling at him now, even though the smile isn't altogether happy. He hears Erin let out a snort, but she ceases berating him. Probably because she knows she'll get another chance at it soon enough., Kate doesn't always speak up for him. 

She sits down on the edge of the bed, and he swears he feels it sag in response to her weight. His head is out from under the pillow. Her left hand moves as she attempts to touch his brow, and he instinctively pulls back a fraction. He doesn't want her touching him. If she touches him, her skin will be cold, and that will make her shift from benign to hostile. Her green eyes narrow as she takes her hand away, puts it in her lap.

"Let me wake up."

He might have actually said it out loud, but if so his voice is barely above a mumble. Kate's shoulders rise and fall, and she says, "I can't do that for you, Aaron. You have to go through this for as long as you go through it. There are no short cuts." The kindness in her voices makes the words hit him even harder. It makes him almost prefer Erin's belligerence. Almost. He's not quite _that_ far gone yet.

Kate's silence lingers for a while, and eventually he becomes aware that there's a shadow near the window, a shadow that's moving. His heart climbs up into his throat, and all he can do is lie there. As before, he's immobile, unable to even cover his eyes. There's moonlight coming through the window, illuminating the shadow.

All of the ghosts are bad in their own way, reminders of agony he's never entirely forgotten, and its only the cruelty of Peter Lewis - Mr. Scratch - that has roused them from their graves. But out of all of them, Elle is the worst. Because her story is the only one he doesn't know the ending to.

She never has much to say, and she doesn't speak now. The silvery moon highlights her face, making it even sharper. Like the others, she hasn't aged, and the set of her mouth is at once achingly familiar and completely alien. Is she angry? Disappointed? Unhappy? He wishes she'd speak, but he's fairly certain that she won't. And when she turns back towards the window without saying a word, he isn't surprised.

When he finally does wake up, the faces of the lost are still fresh in his mind, as are the images of the ones who have survived. His pillow case is damp, and he knows without checking that he cried in his sleep. He'll have to switch out the cases before breakfast. If he doesn't, he might forget, and Jack comes into his room sometimes to look for things. He doesn't want his son to worry. 

He gets out of bed, removes each pillow case after getting a fresh set from the linen closet. There's probably going to be a case today, because as Haley once said, there's always a case. He catches a look at himself in the mirror just as he's leaving the room, and for one second, he sees his ghosts gathered together in the reflective surface, but then they vanish and he isn't sure if he _really_ saw them or if it was just another hallucination. He even looks over his shoulder to be sure, but of course there's no one there. 

Maybe he should schedule an appointment with his counselor. At least if there isn't someone he _can_ possibly save.


End file.
